Study Guide Unit IV
The Politics of Public Policy/Civil Rights & Civil Liberties (chapters 15-21)
Content Goals:
This unit consists of discussions regarding several areas of public policy, including foreign and defense policy; health care; and economic, environmental and social welfare policy. You will understand the major policy areas and debates in American government today.
Specifically, you will understand the policy-making process: how the political system places an issue on the governmental agenda and how the system decides what to do about that issue once it is on the agenda, how political coalitions or political processes (majoritarian, client, interest group, and entrepreneurial politics) are formed, and how different specific policies require different political coalitions.
You will understand the institutional guarantees of political and civil rights granted under the Constitution, the rights conferred by the American government system, key Supreme Court cases and arguments regarding constitutional protections, the impact of the Fourteenth Amendment on civil rights at the state level, and the impact of judicial decisions on American
socie You ty.
Finally, you will learn that civil liberties are foundational to political beliefs and political culture in the United States, and that those rights are found in the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. You will discover that conflicts regarding civil liberties often involve competing interests—between national security and personal expression and between the right of society to protect itself from criminals and the right of all people to be free from unreasonable searches and coerced confessions.
Short-answer questions:
· Given the policy-making process in America, explain why this statement is of considerable significance: “Those who decide what politics is about will run the country.”
· Explain the difference between majoritarian politics and client politics, using specific policy examples.
· Explain Reaganomics and its effects.
· Describe the actors in the executive branch who are involved in making economic policy.
· Briefly list the major provisions of the Social Security Act of 1935 and the Medicare Act of 1965, and discuss the politics of getting each of these two major welfare programs enacted.
· Explain and provide examples why interest group politics and entrepreneurial politics often give rise to civil liberties cases.
· What are the major forms of expression today that are currently not protected by the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment?
· List the strategic considerations behind the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) decision to promote black interests through the courts, and explain how their strategy managed to overcome some of the handicaps blacks had traditionally faced.
· Discuss the arguments both for and against affirmative action, pointing out how the Supreme Court has attempted to accommodate each side.
· Explain the historical background of the Munich-Pearl Harbor and the Vietnam worldviews (paradigms). Discuss when each has predominated in U.S. foreign policy making and what adherents each has today.
· Describe the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Explain the reasons behind the creation of this three-service body and the effects the structure has on the allocation of the military budget.
· Discuss why environmental policy is so controversial in the United States.
· Explain how the environmental movement was created by entrepreneurial politics.
Long-essay Questions:
a. The nation’s economic health is crucial to voters, yet there is no consensus about how to manage the economy:
§ Explain how adherents to the four economic theories—monetarism, Keynesianism, planning, and supply-side economics—would deal with the cause of and solution to the problem of inflation;
§ Speculate why the text claims “the nation has no meaningful budget, [but] instead the president and Congress struggle over particular spending bills whose amounts reflect interest group and client pressures.”
b. Even though health care spending in the U.S. is the highest in the world, our spending on social welfare is stingy compared to most Western European nations:
§ Describe the cultural factors that make our social welfare policies different from what exists in many other developed nations;
§ Discuss why abolishing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) turned out to be so easy, while politicians rarely talk seriously about cutting back on, much less abolishing, Social Security;
§ Could anyone design a welfare program that would be acceptable to both liberals and conservatives? Explain your reasons.
c. Leaders make foreign policy based on their worldviews (paradigms), which are “mental picture[s] of the critical problems facing the U.S. in the world and…the appropriate and inappropriate ways of responding to these problems.”
§ Describe the four foreign policy world views presented by the text: Isolationism, containment, disengagement and human rights;
§ Regardless of their worldviews, describe how presidents have used their Constitutional powers to dominate foreign policy;
§ Consider whether our open, democratic government is at a disadvantage when it comes to conducting foreign policy.
d. Assume the position of the military chief of the Army with the responsibility of getting a major new weapon system approved:
§ Describe the type of politics that would best meet your goals: majoritarian, client, interest-group, entrepreneurial;
§ Who must be consulted about this system, and whose approval is needed?
§ What constitutional checks exist to keep military decisions accountable to the public?
e. The text claims that “[d]ebates about civil liberties reach down into our fundamental political beliefs and political culture”:
§ Regarding the 1st Amendment’s civil liberties protections, answer the following:
§ What are the limitations the “establishment clause” places on governments?
§ What are the major forms of expression today that are not protected by the Supreme Court's interpretation of the First Amendment?
§ What can the government legally (Constitutionally) do to fight terrorism, while at the same time protecting civil liberties?
Unit IV Assignment: Politics of Public Policy
On the day of the essay exam, you will be required to turn in outlines that answer the following questions.
Chapter 15: The Policy-Making Process
1. Since entrepreneurial politics often involves emotional appeals, describe how a crisis might aid the policy entrepreneur, and why entrepreneurial politics might take on a moralistic tone.
2. Analyze why those who bear the costs do not often oppose client policies.
Chapter 16: Economic Policy
1. Analyze why the president is held accountable for the economy, even though Congress plays an important role in setting fiscal policy and that the Federal Reserve Board is largely independent in setting monetary policy.
Chapter 17: Social Welfare
1. Discuss the major provisions of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996; make sure you include implications for federalism.
2. Analyze why Congress might now feel trapped by the Social Security program.
Chapter 18: Civil Liberties
1. The free exercise clause protects religious behavior, though it doesn’t define what a religion is. Speculate what the Court may consider to be a test to determine valid religion. Explain how courts might distinguish fraudulent religious claims from legitimate ones.
Chapter 19: Civil Rights
1. List the strategic considerations behind the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) decision to promote African-American interests through the courts after the Plessey decision, and show how that strategy managed to overcome some of the handicaps African Americans had traditionally faced.
2. Describe exactly what the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed to African Americans (and others).
Chapter 20: Foreign and Military Policy (outline only two of the following):
1. Analyze why three separate uniformed services exist within a single Defense Department, if the result is inter-service rivalry.
2. Summarize the constitutional and congressional checks on presidential power in foreign policy.
3. As we will discuss, each element of the War Powers Act has its problematic aspects. Speculate the requirements that would most likely be set aside by a president intent on functioning as a commander-in-chief. Similarly, speculate what requirements a Congress would be most likely to insist be observed, in order to sustain its role in making foreign and military policy.
4. Of the several paradigms discussed in the text, describe which worldview you would endorse for the foreign policy of the United States. Why would you advocate this worldview and not another? Explain why your perspective might change if you were president or a member of Congress.
Chapter 21: Environmental Policy
1. Explain how the environmental movement was created by entrepreneurial politics.